Our Hellaburban Homeschool

A LEGO chess board and set, built by the boys without instructions. They used S's set as a model and improvised with what they had. Summer 2017.

We are not...

what you would call intentional homeschoolers. Hellaburbia has decent schools that get a lot of parent support, and that was our original plan. However, meeting our kids' needs has brought us to this solution, and we work hard to make it a good fit for everyone. As of September 2017, we will be in our fourth year of homeschooling. I homeschool under the Private School Affidavit, which I file every year with the CA Department of Education. This gives us a ton of flexibility, and as such, our school year is year-round, with the premise that learning is constant, and jamming a year of math into 36 weeks is stressful.

In homeschooling lingo, we are secular, eclectic, academic homeschoolers. Secular in that our curriculum does not contain any religious content, our science does not refer to Young Earth Science or Intelligent Design, and that religions are often treated similarly as mythology. Eclectic in that we fit the material and the modality to each kid as best we can, and make learning to learn our overarching goal. Academic in that we expose the boys to everything that might get them ready for what they want to do as adults, be that the military, skilled trades, college, or a combination.